Wednesday, 7 September 2016

Will the iPhone 7 be waterproof?

Rubber seal on iPhone 7 SIM card tray
suggests new Apple handset is first to be waterproof.

he pain of dropping an iPhone into a puddle
or down the toilet could be a thing of the past, as it is understood the
upcoming iPhone 7 will be water resistant. A collection of SIM card trays
claimed to come from the new handset, which will be revealed by Apple on 7
September, include a rubber seal thought to keep water out.

Pictures of the trays appeared online just
days ahead of Apple's press conference.

Efforts to waterproof the iPhone come several
years after Android phone makers like Sony and Samsung started designing their
phones to survive a dunking, but this isn't Apple's first foray into
waterproofing its gadgets.

The Apple Watch has an IPX7 rating, which
means it can survive being submerged into one metre of clean water for up to 30
minutes. And while it wasn't mentioned by Apple, tests published on YouTube
found the iPhone 6S and S6 Plus to be water resistant for at least 10 minutes.

Even if they weren't waterproof enough for
Apple to mention it, the 6S phones fared much better underwater than the iPhone
6 a year earlier, which was known to die after being submerged for just a few
moments.

The SIM trays with rubber seals were
discovered by a Vietnamese blogger who, according to 9to5Mac, claims to have used a working iPhone 7.

Further cementing the claims of a waterproof
iPhone 7 is Ming-Chi Kuo, a renowned and well-connected analyst who believes
the new handset will have an IPX7 rating.

There have been many other leaks associated
with the iPhone 7 over recent weeks, and from these it is possible for us to
build up a good picture of what the handset will be like. It is likely to have
the same 4.7in screen as the iPhone 6S (and the 7 Plus will have the same 5.5in
display as the 6S Plus).

The biggest news will be a dual-lens rear
camera for the iPhone 7 Plus and the removal of the headphone jack on both
handsets. There will also be increased performance thanks to a new Apple A10
processor and more RAM, and minimum storage will be increased from 16GB to
32GB.

Apple's big event kicks off in San Francisco
at 10am local time (6pm BST) and here is how you can watch it live.